The professor banished his dark thoughts with an effort. "God forbid!" he said cheerfully. "And here comes tea!"
CHAPTER XXVII
One wonders what would happen to our admirable muddle of a world, if even a minority of its inhabitants were suddenly to embrace consistency. It would, presumably, be a world still, but so changed that its best friends would not know it. It is because every-body, everywhere and at all times, acts as they could not logically be expected to act, that our dear familiar chaos of you-never-can-tell continues to entertain us.
Had Desire possessed consistency, this quality so jewel-like in its rarity, she would have realized that, having voluntarily stepped aside from woman's natural destiny, she should also have ceased to trouble herself with those feminine doubts and hopes which are peculiar to it. She would have known that the position of secretary to a professional man does not logically include heart-burnings and questionings concerning that gentleman's love affairs, past or present. She would have refused to consider Mary. She would have been quite happy in the position she had deliberately made for herself.
Much as we would like to present Desire in this thoroughly sensible light, we fear that her action on the morning following her visit to the invalid Miss Martin would not bear us out in so doing. For on that morning, with all facts of the situation freshly in her mind, she went down-town to Dr. Rogers' office for no other purpose than to see and talk to Dr. Rogers' yellow-haired nurse.
"When I see her and hear her," said Desire to her-self, "I shall know. And it will be so comfortable to know." Never a word, mind you, about the inconsistency of being uncomfortable through not knowing.
No attempt at reminding herself that knowledge was none of her business. No arguing out of the matter at all. Merely the following of a blind impulse to find Mary if Mary were to be found.
This impulse, which was wholly foreign to her natural habit of mind, she justified to herself under the guise of "natural curiosity." All she had to do was to make the call seem sufficiently casual and to time her arrival at the doctor's office at an hour when he could not possibly be in it. As a newcomer, such a mistake would seem quite plausible and could be passed over easily with "How stupid of me! I should have known." After that the nurse would probably invite her to wait. And, even if she did not, the mere exchange of question and answer would probably be sufficiently revealing.
This small program proceeded exactly as planned and Desire, in her most becoming frock, learned of the absence of Dr. Rogers with exactly the right degree of impatience and regret.